Best SEO tools
A note on what is absent: Ahrefs and Semrush are tracked daily but publish their prices in ways our extraction does not yet hold as a named ladder, so they are excluded rather than guessed. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on the date beside it. The ordering is cheapest entry price first — a basis you can check rather than a ranking you have to trust.
What “best” means on this page
“Best” is not a mood — it is whichever axis you actually care about, measured. Our record can say which tool is cheapest to start, whose free plan is real, who bills local currency and whose prices just moved; it cannot say which tool fits your work, which is what the full comparisons are for. Cheapest never means best — it means cheapest. Each verdict below names its axis, and every tool links to its own site so you can check us against the source. No vendor paid for any position.
Entry at $18/mo — the lowest published paid plan in this set. Cheap is a fact, not a verdict; the profile below says what you get for it.
site ↗pricing ↗A plan priced at zero on the vendor’s own page — trials not counted. What each one caps differs; the profiles say.
Showed us different money in different countries on the same day — measured, not assumed. The profiles carry the figures.
Tool by tool
Mangoolssite ↗pricing ↗
Paid plans start at $18/mo (Mangools Basic); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 2 paid tiers, topping out at $48/mo (Mangools Agency). It bills by country — entry €37/mo in the eurozone, from our same-day reads.
SpyFusite ↗pricing ↗
Paid plans start at $39/mo (Basic); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $249/mo (DATA).
Mozsite ↗pricing ↗
Paid plans start at $99/mo (Standard); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $299/mo (Large).
Ahrefssite ↗pricing ↗
Paid plans start at $129/mo (Lite); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 4 paid tiers, topping out at $1499/mo (Enterprise).
Semrushsite ↗pricing ↗
Paid plans start at $139.95/mo (SEO); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 4 paid tiers, topping out at $549/mo (Advanced).
Side by side
| Tool | Paid from | Free plan | Currency | Read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mangools | $18/mo | — | USD | 2026-08-29 | page |
| SpyFu | $39/mo | — | USD | 2026-08-29 | page |
| Moz | $99/mo | — | USD | 2026-08-29 | page |
| Ahrefs | $129/mo | — | USD | 2026-08-27 | page |
| Semrush | $139.95/mo | Yes | USD | 2026-08-27 | page |
How to choose in this category
- Entry prices are high and annual billing is where the discounts live.
- Tiers are data limits — keyword counts, tracked sites, report caps — more than features.
- Prices in this category move; check the change log before quoting one.